Celebrations

December8,2013

by Father Jack Shrum

Dear friends,

Already the time is short. I love Advent, and yet it goes so fast. I think that may be that is what lends to its feel as a season of anticipation. While we long for the coming of the Lord, He is already come. While we anticipate His birth, He has already been born in us through baptism. “Come and do not delay,” the Church cries out in this time, and while we know neither the day nor the moment, we do know that He is with us always until the end of the age since He himself has promised. At once we long for His coming, and at the same time we know He is here.

Since these days are so full in preparation for the coming celebrations it is important to take the time to be deliberate in our seeking out His direction and what He would have us do in preparation. We make all kinds of preparations for the secular celebrations, yet are our hearts ready to receive Him? Running from task to task have we slowed down at all? Do we prepare our hearts to receive Him as we sit/kneel in prayer? Have we recollected ourselves as we come into His presence in the Church preparing our hearts to receive Him in Holy Communion? After receiving Him, are we truly mindful of the gift that resides in us? God lives in us! He abides in us just as He did in the womb of Mary, in those moments after communion. Savor that moment. In these days especially, we can ponder what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph as they awaited the birth of their Son, the Son of the Most High God.

The week ahead is full of celebrations, the height of which is the celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This Monday we celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. A solemnity, which is a status higher than that of a feast, and a holy day of obligation, this year it is not obligatory to come to Mass that day since it is transferred from Sunday to Monday. The 8th falling on Sunday this year pushes the celebration to Monday, on which day we will have Mass at 9am and 7pm. In our country we celebrate the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception as the feast of our patroness. In the early days of our country, America was dedicated to Our Lady under the title of the Immaculate Conception. Recently I read a book entitled, The Spiritual Journey of George Washington. As an Anglican he would have know the Blessed Mother and had a devotion to her. At the low point of the Revolutionary War in Valley Forge, when his rag tag army was not doing so well, he fell on his knees in prayer asking for God’s help in full view of his men. A short time later, a beautiful lady appeared to him in his quarters and encouraged him. She showed to him the birth, progress, and destiny of the United States. After that the tide turned in the war and we know the history.

About 245 years earlier, Our Lady appeared in Mexico to a humble native who had been baptized only one year after Cortez had arrived in that great land. She appeared to her most humble of servants, Juan Dieguito, little Juan Diego. Giving him the message that she was to be venerated in the spot which she appeared, she told him to go to the bishop of Mexico City and petition him to build a chapel there. Reluctant, the bishop hesitated to act on his petition. Our Lady was persistent though and on the third day of revelations to Juan Diego, she prepared a sign for the bishop. She told Juan Diego to gather up the roses she had caused to grow on that hill and then take them to the bishop. Obedient, Juanito went to the bishop with the flowers. Arriving in the presence of the hesitant bishop Juan Diego revealed the sign to him and all fell to their knees as an even greater sign appeared on his tilma, an image of the Blessed ever Virgin Mary, Mother of the true God. Through this image millions of people were converted to the Catholic Faith within a short span of years, and yearly over 10 million people visit her shrine on that hill called Tepeyac to encounter the sweet loving embrace of the Mother of God in that place. I invite you to celebrate these great feasts of Our Lady this week and learn from her the great love of her Son.